Finding files in Linux/Mac Terminal

The exec is a simple way of performing functions on the results. If you leave it off, the find doesn’t really do anything.

So, the simplest thing to do is find a file, so the exec becomes the output:

find / -name wkhtmltopdf* -exec ls -ls {} \;

That will find all files starting with wkhtmltopdf starting from / and the function to run on it is ls -ls {} \;

The {} will be replaced with the search result, so, in essence, ls -ls filename; will show you the details about the file which is what I want, as I am looking for all copies of the wkhtmltopdf toolkit on the server.

You can obviously change the exec to delete the files, or copy/move them, or interrogate further…